Book #57 of 2020:
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
This is for the most part an enjoyable madcap picaresque, but its entitled manchild of a protagonist can be awfully infuriating. Admittedly much of the humor of the text is at that character’s own expense, but I still found myself gritting my teeth more than grinning over his antics as he romps his way across New Orleans. I think this may also be a case where the backstory behind a book’s publication — the author’s suicide, his mother’s efforts to get the manuscript published over a decade later, and ultimately a posthumous Pulitzer Prize — is more interesting and moving than the written story itself. It’s remarkable that we have the novel at all, but I can’t say that I entirely love it.
[Content warning for racist, ableist, and homophobic slurs, fatphobia, and repeated use of ‘abortion’ as an insult.]
★★★☆☆
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